


Chains of Habit

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [3]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, M/M, Stockmarket AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-24
Updated: 2008-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place soon after Balthier and Tseng meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chains of Habit

“You are,” Tseng says, “a man of habit. Bad habit.”

Balthier nods across their table, littered with spent teacups and the discards of their lunch. His eyes aren’t on Tseng, but rather on their charming young waitress who is currently bent over whilst attending the table across from theirs. Balthier smiles. His eyes, Tseng notes, are quite in conflict to his expression. He looks at the girl as though she’s a window to somewhere far distant, somewhere well away from the grey skies and squat surrounds that weigh the best of London streets.

“You are what you repeatedly do,” Balthier replies.

Tseng tries that statement, twisting it in his mind like a puzzle. It never works. Balthier just doesn’t come together however Tseng tries to make the pieces fit. The waitress straightens, her eyes on Balthier’s. Now she’s smiling, and conspicuously neglects to pull her skirt back down.

“So. You’re an asshole, then?”

Balthier snorts. He runs long fingers through his hair, thumbs an earring, and (Tseng winces) throws a wink to the waiting girl. “I am a bad habit, Tseng. Your bad habit. You Americans enjoy admitting your addictions: I’m fairly sure there’s enough of you now that you can form a club and curse me as a blight sent by God to test your resolve.”

“You’re the one that calls me.”

“You’re the one that answers.”

“Your particular habit risks making an act notable for its enjoyable rarity into a dull, daily necessity.”

Balthier rolls his shoulders and sets them in a stubborn line. “We think we make our habits, yet in the end they make us. If this is going where I think it is…Tseng,” he sounds both pained and strangely sharp, “I’m not one to insist that you cut your hair; you, or so I thought, were likewise respectful of the madness behind a man’s methods.”

Tseng has never asked why Balthier cruises so constantly and he’s not going to, though he does wonder if Balthier would ever admit what he does is beyond want or necessity. Tseng’s seen what happens when habit becomes stronger than reason. Tseng is very careful to ensure he always has his reasons, even for Balthier. Habit is a matter of dangerous repetition, yet excellence can’t be found in a singular act. It’s a fine line to walk, even for Tseng.

When the waitress comes to ask if they’d like something a little sweeter for dessert, there's something mildly disturbing about having Balthier's hand on his leg while the man flirts, unashamedly vocal. This, then, the silence after her departure, leaves Tseng where he doesn’t want to be.

"Failing your self control, I hope you’ve developed better habits with relation to precautionary measures." Tseng hates the words even as he speaks. The corollary: he doesn't think Balthier mature enough to afford voiding the warning.

"Condoms are indeed another bad habit of mine," Balthier says agreeably, his eyes on the girl as she struts away. "I invariably use hundreds. Thousands. "

Habit, good or bad, is a disguise, a mask for the man behind; on the few occasions Tseng’s cut off his hair, he’s seen how it changes how others respond to him. Habit is the canniest of disguises; Tseng wonders what Balthier’s hiding by showing it all. Habit isn’t a blade. It’s a hammer that pounds and pounds, to make of men only a two dimensional sliver. He wonders, not entirely idly, how much more of this sort of existence Balthier can take before he loses all his depth.

In this world, excess is the easy path. Better men take excess and turn it into privation. Tseng knows that he is, without a doubt, the better man here. He sleeps very, very well at night because of it; Balthier, Tseng knows, doesn’t sleep at all.

-

Balthier’s wide gesture encompasses the world; his expression, Tseng notes, almost approximates a sneer.

“…make yourself at home. Someone might as well.”

He doesn't call it a castle, but Tseng hears the unsaid word. Compared to American sizes, it's probably equivalent to some suburban monstrosity, but with more stone, draughts, corners, fireplaces and murders. Everything's relative, Tseng supposes. Balthier's father killed himself in this house. Tseng's glad neither of them believe in ghosts.

The size of the landscape dwarfs the castle. Tseng spends a day wandering, mapping, trying to work out where in the shrunken forests or too-green grass is what makes Balthier, Balthier. The stone is older than the name; the Bunansas are old blood, but not this old.  
Tseng finds his way to the garage, and he’s sweating from his run by the time he gets there. Balthier, Tseng thinks, probably drives the distance. The garage is larger than the castle itself.

When Tseng throws back the doors, he’s thrown into a world of doubt: perhaps, perhaps, money is for something more than keeping score.

Some habits, however excessive, seduce even the most pared-back of men.

-

Balthier keeps all his keys in a bowl in a kitchen that looks like it could handle half a hundred dismembered deer; the bowl itself would supply a cohort with spiked punch well past midnight.

The bowl tempts Tseng. Balthier is, Tseng has noted on more than one occasion, anal about a lot of things: he’s matched keyring to car. Tseng digs for one in particular. This would be, Tseng thinks as he jogs back to the garage, utterly unforgivable but for the suspicion that Balthier keeps his keys so disdainfully presented exactly for this purpose. The only way to be rid of a temptation, Balthier’s told Tseng on more than one occasion, is to surrender to it.

Within about thirty minutes Tseng discovers the local coppers have an (expensive) understanding with Balthier. They're quite forgiving when they catch up, and return Tseng and 1977 pearl-white Jaguar XJ coupe without a scratch amidst a full-flanked escort, with handcuffs included.

The unfortunate brogue of the locals has Tseng struggling to understand the whip-crack dialogue, though it doesn’t surprise him that Balthier imitates the drawl to perfect incomprehension. Balthier is as much of a man of the world as he can make himself; Tseng could have told him that it’s not language that takes a man away from the fact of his birth. Balthier spouts something; there’s a burst of laughter; the hands that hold Tseng release him to Balthier’s custody, and the police move away.

Balthier continues to lean against the great wooden doorframe, his grin as crooked as his stance.

“Handcuffs,” Tseng points out.

“You’ve got good taste,” Balthier says, and nods to the car that gleams in the pebbled forecourt, bone-white under the moon. “My first lady of liberty, that one.”

“Handcuffs,” Tseng says, because the police are starting their cars and leaving.

“Mm,” Balthier says. He walks – no, saunters down the steps to reach where Tseng stands. His lips are on Tseng’s ear, then his tongue, followed by his whisper: “I do hope they’re comfortable.”

Tseng has always hated corrupt officials. The whole width of the Atlantic doesn’t change that.

-

 _Tseng. A caress, fingers finding hair, lifting, pulling; decadence incarnate, and Tseng leans into it, oh—_

 _Come on, man, you’re clearly enjoying this._

 _You’re enjoying it a hell of a lot more._

 _Tseng, Tseng, you’re a man under that ice-maiden mask._

 _Knots of spine and flanking muscle, fingers find valleys and depth; feel and count and apply then, pressure; Tseng arches and tenses, tightens shoulders against the bonds, he's, yes he is–_

 _You enjoy the drama of reining me in. Consider this a treat._

 _Tseng, can’t you!_

 _Stubborn, stubborn creature, spine of ice and steel yet it bends; his thighs are tight, he’s holding me, arching but he never surrenders, never snaps, never breaks, what’s he hanging on to? Not his pride; what’s pride to him?) Oh, God, God, man – can’t you just once, just damned once, give in – You’re as mortal as the rest of us. Your desires can get the better of you. You’re fallible, human, everything you mock—fuck—_

 _…I thought come stains leather this pale._

 _It does._

 _Fuck. Just: fuck._

 _I suggested we play inside. Next time take my advice? It's offered in good faith._

 _But this—isn’t a game, Tseng, I don’t want it to be—_

-

So. Tseng drives a hybrid. The moderation leaves him hungry for what Balthier keeps.

The hybrid makes sense, with New York traffic the way it is. He does catch the subway most days, but when he has to drive, it's in a car that idles so quietly he often wonders if it's still running. His bit for the environment, he supposes. A part of the disguise; a habit lauded for its goodness while everyone overlooks the fact that it’s still a habit. Tseng is a responsible man, running on ethical juices. Very soon, he supposes, he'll deliberately start avoiding his Starbucks on a Tuesday morning (not Mondays, never Mondays) just so he can donate that $3 a day to some charity dealing with starving children in Africa. It's what people like him should do for the world. It makes sense. Little men, little responses.

Saving the world, Tseng will leave up to Rufus. The next set of keys he appropriates is for the Roadster.

Balthier’s already waiting at the shed.

-

"Just out of curiosity, how much does fuel for this thing cost?"

Balthier grins at the horizon as the sunroof furls. The scarf about his neck whips in the wind. Tseng feels his hair do the same.

"I don't know. We can ask the driver when we get back, if you like. He fills them up for me. All I care about is having a full tank."

"Where are we going?"

“I take it you don’t mean ‘we’ as in ‘us.” Balthier surrenders a laugh to the wind. "Where's any man going, Tseng? To his grave?"

"I have a plane to catch tomorrow. In London, not Glasgow."

"How about Wales? Shouldn't take too long to get there at this speed. I might even let you drive back."

Tseng tries not to look at where Balthier's beringed fingers wrap around the immaculate pale leather of the wheel. Classics in this condition are not common in the city, ridiculously inappropriate in a New York setting. The car's vibration takes up residence in Tseng’s bloodstream.

"What's in Wales?"

"Absolutely nothing," Balthier says, "but a hell of a lot of long, very twisty roads. And scenery. Prime exporter of the picturesque."

"Perfection," Tseng says.

Balthier flashes him a grin.

-

Tseng chooses his desires carefully. He does not share a room with Balthier, for any number of reasons that Balthier is still busy trying to guess at. ("What is it? Do you have space issues? Embarrassing personal hygiene problems? For fuck's sake, the floor's freezing at night and you still want to walk across the hallway, naked?")

One of the reasons he keeps a separate room from Balthier is that it makes waking up in the morning far easier. Balthier is frenetic and very close to psychotic with his sleep schedule: he jumps at everything, naps in positions as twisted as his sexual ones, and wouldn't know a REM cycle if it hit him in the face. Sometimes he sleeps through to noon because he can't get to sleep until six.

Six is the hour that Tseng gets up at, and when he's staying in Balthier's impregnable little fortress of solitude, he likes to be out of the house and doing three or four laps around the grounds before the hour's out.

Balthier drives an asinine golf cart to catch up with him whenever he's awake enough. It's humiliating that Tseng can outrun him even when he has the pedal pressed down flat. It's not quite pity that has Tseng stop and wait.

-

It's nowhere near as pitiful as what Tseng has to endure every (damn) time Balthier comes down to New York, where Balthier always and inevitably fails to understand the difference between a local and express train and sometimes even fails to understand the difference between the notions of "uptown" and "downtown".

A gleeful: "Help me, where the fuck am I" is, as Tseng has pointed out before, not a helpful statement. When Tseng drives, even another man's car, he gets back to where he's come from from wherever he's gone to. When Balthier strays off, Tseng loses two hours of his life trawling Manhattan.

-

Balthier likes getting lost. He tries very hard to piss off sometimes.

It’s a horrible thing to always know where one is in the world; it feels, he thinks, like being trapped in a cupboard. The worst experience he’s ever had (apart from being brutally mugged in a sordid Barcelona alley) was being in Venice. The city of cities, at least from a European’s point of view: Balthier sprinted away from his father’s cohort and succeeded in getting himself entirely, pleasurably lost. He wandered for a whole day, looking through sixteen-year-old eyes that had possibly seen too much. When the sun was going down something clicked, or possibly snapped. He wasn’t lost. He was in Venice, a city where no man could ever get lost, where no matter the convolution of centuries of history within the streets he would always find his way out, his way to the edge. Every damned street looked the same. After that, every damned city looked the same. The revelation nearly killed him. Novelty existed only for the imbeciles of the world. Balthier had a regrettably snapshot memory: his eyes would always map, correlate, compare, respond, every city measured against every other city, every person a reminder of another.

Even in New York. Especially in New York. The uniformed youth is overly helpful with his directions, his fingertips lightly on Balthier’s hand as he prolongs the discussion. One thing about America, Balthier knows, is that people wear who they are on the outside here as though wanting a challenge. The flick of a wrist, the set of a belt.; Balthier's not going to get hit here for an unwelcome proposition. The boy’s hair is long and black, and veils the world and the incorrigible youthfulness of his features. Balthier flirts: a compliment, an elongated touch, a long, slow smile. The youth runs his hands through his own hair and reveals a startled eye, the flush of surprise - still arrogant, though. New York dolls are always arrogant. This habit, the same the world around, eases the way and always ends in the same place. The child gives Balthier a number on a scrap of paper watermarked with sad Japanese, and stretches to offer a warmly enthusiastic kiss. Balthier turns his head swiftly: the boy claims his cheek with chapstick’d lips.

Balthier is strangely touched. Such a gallant kiss, lunging brave across the void that spans between uniformed child and uniformed businessman. Subtract the age, Balthier thinks, and we all wear our uniformity well.

When the excitement of being almost lost fades against the monochrome of a city seen from the gutter instead of from the air, Balthier calls Tseng.

-

"—trawling," Tseng asks, and it is not a question.

"Oh yes. It's much better than fishing. The yield is far greater." Balthier waves out the window at a long-haired...boy...girl...thing slouching against a graffiti'd wall. The...boy. Girl. Waves back. Exuberantly.

"Balthier, that was a..." Tseng considers. "Very young thing. In uniform."

"Mm. Jailbait tends to swim in schools. They’re also very fond of biting at things that shine."

Tseng refuses to look at Balthier's collar. The man wears them starched high and his earrings dangling low.

Balthier wraps long fingers about the shiftstick. "Care to give me a polish?"

Tseng slams on the brakes. Balthier is always without restraint. He hits the dash quite satisfyingly.

"Sorry," Tseng says.

"You are not."

"Ah well." Tseng accelerates, slowly. Balthier puts on his seatbelt this time, with much care to ensure his lapels won’t be creased. "Neither are you."

-

Habits are strange things. Tseng, despite whatever comments (flattering or otherwise) are sent his way, will treat his hair better than he would treat his mother if she were still alive. Every man needs some indulgent habit in a life of balance; Tseng makes sure his is close to home, and ever and always manageably silky. Rufus is likewise obsessed with his whites, crisp, starched, immaculate, as though the colour itself could edge him towards redemption, that purity of ash that comes after the burnout of the black-suit brigade of his father’s era. When Tseng lies back on Rufus' pure-white pillows he will look at the spill of his own hair and feel something stir him in ways that he is unfamiliar with; he wants to sweep away either the black or the white of it, to act against habit, to reach and claim. The darkness looks out of place against all that white, like spilled ink.

In fine eccentric British tradition, Balthier's strange habits are too numerous to count. Tseng gives up keeping score.

It is, as Rufus has often noted, difficult to get Tseng to give up anything.


End file.
